


Sacred Mountains

by wickedsinflower



Series: Children of Spira [3]
Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: Culture, Death, Drabble Sequence, Experience, Feminist Themes, Friendship, Gen, Honor, Maturity, Other, Power Dynamics, Sacred, Sacrifice, Sex, Taboo, Youth, themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21542305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedsinflower/pseuds/wickedsinflower
Summary: Sacred Mountain Gagazet tests the foundations of ones strength, revealing how one to chooses to live their life, and how one chooses to die. Rikku has things that she keeps inside and it's more than memories.This is a chronological narrative, with a cultural focus with basis on realism. Contains important moments in character relationship development. All drabble prompt words are themes, discussed and shown in the chapters of Silk and Steel- parent work. Drabbles all under 100 words.
Series: Children of Spira [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1539910
Kudos: 1





	1. Rikku

**Author's Note:**

> Travel across Spira is lengthened somewhat more realistically. Canon, except for some liberties with internal dialogue and cultural norms. This is an excerpt from Silk and Steel, takes place between chapters six and seven. Does not contain 'spoilers' for Silk and Steel as much as it is an explanation of the rather "weird" situations written to interrogate these thematic concepts. It also prevents me from writing an extra hundred pages for the emotional monster that is Zanarkand. The important pieces are here.

**Life**

The Ronso have a cold life, Rikku thinks, but their blankets are woven out of their own winter fur and it’s warm against her skin. She sees two kits fight with feisty roars and teeth, but they fall in the snow, snuggling. Their fur looks unimaginably soft together and Rikku is jealous. A sharp sense of being the outsider and bitter cold slices at her, but she adjusts her targe and returns the blanket with gratitude.

**Culture**

Biran roared to the mountain to recognise that Kimarhi was strong. When she was ten, Rikku poured water into the sand with her first blood shedding and buried a toy her mother made her. She didn’t know about Yuna, but apparently sixteen was old enough to marry, and young enough to die. She asked Auron when he became a warrior monk. Twelve. She nudged him and told him that she thought he had always been this young.

**Indoctrination**

Rikku moved so Birans hymn did not pour from his soul so acutely into hers, but the Ronso’s song reverberated from the mountain into her bones, just as her people’s song lived in her skin and clung to her like sand. The hymn was too deep in the church, but too close to the heart of people. She wondered if the Mountain was Sacred to the Ronso because of Yevon, or if somehow- like this hymn- Yevon stole it, too.

**Death**

The Al Bhed do not send their dead. They cannot. If the Church knew where they died, they’d know where they live. They stand at a grave. _They_ are worried about the souls becoming fiends. Holding on too strongly to memories mean you're blinded to life, Rikku feels, and she knows the pyreflies react to each other and the observer. Still, she feels for them, because she doesn’t think that any of it’s fair. 

**Worth**

Rikku is horrified. The fiends gore, smash, and slam Auron into the ground. But he protects himself as best he can, and she worries about whether he has listened to her or if he just thinks the fiends are tougher.

**Honor**

They’re huddled in a ledge in a small crevasse while Kimahri forages for the white rabbits only he is able to find. She is freezing, wishing her fingers worked better to make some sort of ice-proofing for the group, but she uses her new small electric torch to see her welding, and does not cuddle in with the rest of the group who are taking a much deserved rest. Auron drapes his coat over her back and stands watch.

**Love**

Tidus doesn’t look at Yuna for very long, but when he does it hurts Rikku. She asks the wheels of the world, again, why she’s here, but looking at Yuna, frozen lips and fiery eyes, she knows. Just as surely as Tidus would look at Yuna, her gravity drifts to Auron, and she whispers by him until he places a hand on her shoulder, reminding them of their alliance, and she springs forward again.

**Friendship**

Wakka ran up and whacked an Imp with his blitzball before it cast lightning on her. He smiled, before wincing from the grenade's attack. She thought maybe he was trying to protect her. Yuna cried, “Shield us from fiery fury!” Lulu’s moogle jumped in as water crashed down, and Kimarhi roared, spearing it with his lance. Tidus rubbed his fist into her head like her brother used to do. Auron rushed past her, swiftly capturing the floating fiend, “Farewell."

**Experience**

Auron broke away an ice block for Braska and Jecht, and Kimarhi’s nostrils flared, ears turning as he looked upwards. Rikku was shivering, as she had been for hours and hours now, but even she knew that here, Kimahri was the one to follow. Just as it was her word or death in the desert, it was Aurons word in battle, but Kimahri knew the mountain, and she thought Auron should be more careful. 

**Body**

Lulu says she heard there were hot springs on Gagazet, and Rikku desperately wants to be warm. Her cramps have long since gone, but she wants that heat, wants to play with her friends in warmth, and maybe herself because she feels so intensely she wants to both wash feelings away and bake in them. 

**Mind**

Rikku knows that Auron knows, but Tidus tells her they just don’t know enough. She’s relieved he realises it, too, but Rikku wonders whose fault that is even while she is happy to have such a companion in a group where she feels most alone. 

  
  


**Sacrifice**

Rikku brushed her hand over his tight fist, and Kimarhi’s gold eyes meet hers. _They_ would never forget.

**Survival**

“Say, is that edible?” The Dark Flan didn’t look delicious, but there was a hollowness to Lulu’s cheeks that hadn’t been there before and the woman who was like an older sister to Yuna had been the one in charge of doling out food. Wakka was the first one to jump aboard, “How many steaks d’ya think we can get outta those?” And for the first time, she and Wakka were totally on the same page. 

**Maturity**

Rikku was telling any joke she could think of about lightning when she was holding the Thundaga infused Sphere in the cave. “An Al Bhed and a Priest play a game and everytime the Al Bhed misses they say ‘Yevon-Sent-it I missed!’ and the Priest goes ‘Don’t take Yevons name in vain!’ and in the end Yevon shoots down a bolt of lightning at the priest, killing him, and the Al Bhed hears from above, ‘I missed!’” Auron laughs. It startles the group, disturbing fiends, but Rikku finds she can absorb the Black Magic.

**Youth**

She is the first back from their first trial of the Mountain and sees Auron playing Jecht's sphere, listening to himself. He makes a sound and closes his eye, replacing the sphere back into his haori. She comes out of the water and thinks he looks a little less grumpy. Later, he performs a kata she never had seen, and blasted a behemoth against the cave wall so hard it’s spine snapped. She hadn’t thought that was possible.

**Power**

The fayths bodies were not statues, she realised in one sickening wave that ran down from her head to her toes. She wondered what power really meant and if it meant power over your own body or over others.

**History**

Auron warned them- said She was sending a test of some sort, like it had always been this way. But Rikku saw him hold a rusty blade with hope and dread, and wondered if things had really always been the way they _had_ to be, or if people were just trapped by the old decisions that wore away what was good and strong.

**Instant**

Tidus was re-telling their journey, but she was tired, hungry, and there wasn’t any more joy she could find in the beginning of a journey that ended this way. But, for a moment the pyreflies seemed to sing, the sun burned like Home, and Auron’s eye was nearly gold, looking at her over the fire as their fiend-steak cooked, a steady reassurance- and it was okay.

  
  


**Taboo**

Some things were just not done. Rikku vivisected a slew of rules with feelings as she stared into pyrefly apparitions. She remembered the taste of fiend meat watching the memory of a mother try to sacrifice her child. Some things were not done because they were _bad,_ had consequences, a betrayal of trust and love. She watched Auron take a swig of his grog, his lip at its mouth as he summoned power, and remembered there were other risks involved.

  
  


**Pleasure**

Yuna slipped her the ring after they entered the trial chamber. She whispered, “I haven’t used it, but- I didn’t need to. I had a little pleasure where I could-” she looked down, smiling wetly, “-when this part was further away.” Rikku felt bittersweet elation and hugged her. She danced her way across the colored tiles, lighting them up with the somber music, the merriest.

**Sex**

Rikku second guessed her desire to wear a tactical bikini, because Yunalesca’s voice was a disturbing kind of seductive, and the dead woman was quickly establishing a nightmarish dominance over all other bikinis and what it meant to wear one. There were few things as intimate as trusting someone with your death, but Rikku felt down in her core this was wrong, when it could be (and often is) beautiful. 

**Sacred**

Knees shaking, tears streaming, she slides down the door to her cabin. Auron doesn’t sleep, she notices, not really. Auron doesn’t eat, she remembers, not really. Food is the thing that keeps them alive, they watch over each other while they sleep but he’s usually the one watching. She _knows_ , but she still thinks of him when she lays alone that night.

  
  



	2. Auron

**Life**

Yuna stands in front of the Ronso and fights for what she believes is life for all. Rikku stands next to her because she thinks that every life is precious. Tidus is transformed, fully living and fighting for the life he was given. They have made their decision. Lulu, Wakka and Kimarhi help but he is less sure of theirs. He watches the elder let them choose death.

**Culture**

The Al Bhed thief nudges him again, poking fun. He can’t remember when he last touched a person, to touch them. When she chitters around him, gazing sorrowfully at Tidus and Yuna, he decides he will take the risk. He places a hand on her bare shoulder with a reassuring word. The priests would condemn him two-fold.

**Indoctrination**

They think they are free of the Church, he thinks bitterly. If they keep thinking they have escaped because they are outside of it, they will never be truly free. Yet, still, his ki is called forth and written on it is the language of Yevon the God and it is, has, and will always will be a part of this world. It is his choice how to use it, but it is a heavy weapon.

**Death**

Auron does not wish for Yuna to pause at every monument to pray, it slows their passage. They must keep moving, or the cold will set into their bones and they will freeze to death. The dead call to the dying, but Auron, catching phoenix feathers braided into hair, senses _his_ state of being is made sharper by those who love to live.

**Power**

The thief listens when she wants to. The Al Bhed commands him sometimes. He doesn’t think Rikku expects him to follow her orders, but he’s learning that there’s a difference between what he knows is an order and what she trusts is one.

**Worth**

He is nothing except the thing that will bring them safely through what he could not overcome. 

**Youth**

He, the eldest, knows things and they do not. But Rikku knows ten thousand things that never in his past life he could have known, and would not have been able to figure out in three. She also admits she does not know all mysteries, but freely explains the wretched, ugly truths of reality. Perhaps the difference is that she can feel joy. Perhaps it is just that he is dead.

**Honor**

The Ronso demonstrates duty. The Black Mage hides a soft heart under a sharp smile and keeps balance. The Captain is loyal, to a fault. The boy shines right, polished with love. The girl’s honor is perfect, familial, unselfish, sacrificial. Enter the thief: She complains loudly, she struggles, she compromises, thrives in chaos, leaves her people. She is greedy for others. She steals things from darkness but makes light. She takes from her friends, like burdens and pain, and repairs their protection. She freely speaks and acts. He thinks she embodies honor.

**Friendship**

There is a snowball fight. The little thief tries to snatch his sunglasses. They’re for an ill made snow-likeness. He tolerates it well because she is lifting herself and others, but they press on. She waits for the boy to whisper her concerns because she sees the ledge but not the end of the fall. They press on, letting the boy and his confidant have their conspiracy. She calls them back, running, shouting that Tidus won’t fight the dead Maester alone and turns immediately, knowing they would all be there. 

**Sacred**

She breaks through Kimarhi’s silence. She knows the loss of the many. She decides that fiends will be meat. She knows Lulu’s portions are wrong. She seeks _his_ comfort though she knows he with holds answers. She repeats one thing but has trouble believing it because she does not know how it could, or will be, true. 

**Mind**

He was a warrior, once. Believed in personal integrity and honesty with others, the capacious mind and choosing death. A warrior’s life is death. But he did not choose death, he failed himself by failing his friends, lies broke him and anger consumed him. Now, living perfectly as a servant and corpse, he cannot call himself a warrior because he is rage. He does not know what he is, except a promise hanging on to the thread of who he wanted to be. 

**Survival**

He spent the last ten years diminishing, removing himself as he drifted in a sleepless metropolis but they need him. He braves the unbearable exquisite agony of recalling every part of life's terrible lightness and Rikku makes a joke. It's fucking hilariously ironic and he feels better watching her brave her fear for the others.

**Taboo**

He knows she is unashamed; of her bleeding, of her naked body, of her refusal to obey the church, of her feelings, or of being a guardian despite what her people say. He suspects she is also unashamed of desire, sex. He eavesdropped when she spoke to Yuna. He was ashamed he ever thought of it another way. He would never be able to tell her- he could not allow himself to. For fifteen reasons, give or take a thousand.

  
  


**Maturity**

Lulu drags her fingers over her breasts, running her fingers through her braids and leans forward. Somehow her neck is always exposed towards Wakka, who turns away. Auron notices that she no longer bats her lashes at him, but neither does she look to him to make her decisions. 

**Sacrifice**

Let his life be the only thing given. 

**Experience**

He has far too many scars for her to look at him like that. 

**History**

He hates it in the Dome. He walks past the bridge, where he found Tidus a light fighter trainer. He crushes a crumbling sign. He knows the being that ran that store. But he doesn't remember everything. Can't recognize all the places. But he knows the dome, and he hates it.

**Pleasure**

She jumps and laughs as she solves the trails. He watches, and rage and hatred are kept at bay. 

**Instant**

He watches himself die. 

**Body**

His body is a lie and he feels little. But when he can feel his heart beat and his mind shift, the desire for the farplane leaves him for an exasperated sigh as hands with green nails steal something else from him. 

**Sex**

Though his equal, and in many ways his better, Rikku is a child. A man, a soldier, a _boy_ with one eye and scars asks to come to her room at night with no declaration. He moves, because Rikku is a girl. Sir Auron’s told that she’s the one who has power, the freedom to choose. Regardless, he affirms _again, child_. Another man offers a declaration and his body for her to choose. He learned, and does not move. He learns: to others, Rikku is no child. It is not something for him to protect her from. He cannot affirm.

**Love**

She asks him stand between her and death, without a glance, trusts him with her life. She hates death, dying, the dead, but she killed for her cousin who happens to be a summoner. She trusts him with her _cousin_ , despite the rest of the world expecting him to help ensure that her Lady Summoner dies. She knows what causes him pain and cares to try to protect him from it. He hopes he misreads the situation.


End file.
